Long-haul protected services: (was: Re: Bee attack, fiber cut, 7-hour outage)

Fri Sep 21 21:43:56 UTC 2007

I'm forking this thread to complain about vendor L's international long 
haul network. Protected Sonet service (T3). DC to UK. I see more outage 
notifications than you'd *believe* since the service was established for 
a customer a few weeks ago. Whether its mandatory fiber relocation or 
some work in France... or all of the above.

Now, getting a notification about a 50ms "switch hit" for protected 
service is great. No worries or concerns -- even superlative.

However, when I see "Location of Maintenance: France" and a 5 minute 
outage for a protected SONET service on a supposedly redundant, high 
quality International voice/data network... well, let's just say I'm not 
impressed -- on 36 hrs notice, no less.

I can't do anything with respect to an SLA since there is advanced 
notice, but isn't it reasonable to assume that in this day-and-age 
running a properly protected T3 isn't *that hard* anymore???? 
Especially in advance -- you know, shunt the traffic to one your other 
circuits because, you know, you are supposed to have this massive network.

I think I just put my naive hat on today and I need to go drink a little 
clue. I'm sure I'll be applying some clue with a manual re-route over 
another Vendor's network shortly. ;)

Deepak